Coke-oven doors are intended to guarantee gas-tight sealing of the coke-oven chamber. For this purpose, numerous seals have been developed for coke-oven doors. Despite the high state of technical development of the seals, careful maintenance of the sealing surfaces on the coke-oven door and the door frame are prerequisites to ensure gas-tight sealing of the chamber.
Both mechanical cleaning apparatuses and cleaning by high-pressure water are known. During mechanical cleaning, brushes, scrapers, graters or wipers and cutting devices are used. These cleaning devices have the disadvantage they require a great deal of time for the cleaning operation and still only have a low cleaning effect because the cleaning tools are not well suited to cleaning these surfaces. In addition, they pose the risk of damaging the seal strips. After extended use of the mechanical cleaning devices, the seal strips definitely become worn. In addition, the cleaning tools are subject to wear and must be replaced at regular intervals.
When cleaning by high-pressure water, contaminated waste water poses a problem.
From DE 30 14 124 C2 a coke-oven door cleaning apparatus is known, proposing the use of mechanical cleaning tools as well as cleaning tools using a high-pressure fluid, e.g. water or steam, for cleaning the coke-oven door.
This type of cleaning has the disadvantage that the cleaning operation is very complex and is associated with the drawbacks of both the mechanical cleaning method of and the cleaning by high-pressure water, that is the development of polluted waste water.
From DE 101 61 659 [U.S. Pat. No. 7,166,197] a coke-oven door (DMT door) is known whose seal strips have such a large spring-loaded seal travel that they can compensate for any deformations occurring during the coking process, thus guaranteeing complete sealing at all times. Also with this door, the level of dirtiness or cleanliness is of crucial importance for the sealing effectiveness and hence for emissions.